Student Writing Prompts

If you've come here looking for student writing prompts for your classroom, household or even yourself, you've come to the right place. This site has over 2,000 thoughtful writing prompts that can be used for children of all ages. There are some for elementary students, middle school students and even high school students. Here are my 10 favorite pages for these prompts on the site. If you'd rather have 500 prompts all in one place for your students, check out my book, 500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade.

Student Writing Prompts

10. Writing Prompts about Friends - Let's face it, if it wasn't for friends, and they had a choice, most students wouldn't come to school. These prompts focus on the great memories and support that kids get from their friends. I promise they dig a lot deeper than, "Who do you like the best and why?"

9. Writing Prompts about Hard Work - For various reasons, a ton of kids have it easier than their parents and grandparents did. These student writing prompts focus on hard work so that they might appreciate how much work they have to put in to achieve something worthwhile.

8. Writing Prompts about Time and Space - If you haven't realized yet, I'm a big fan of making kids think outside the box. These time and space prompts help students to use their imaginations to do just that. These are some great writing ideas to get your kids to write something different for a change.

7. Middle School Writing Prompts - While my site focuses a lot of elementary school prompts, I figured that like the middle child, middle school students deserved to be thrown a bone. I based these prompts on my own awkward middle school years, so they reek of authenticity.

6. Essay Writing Prompts - For better or worse, essays are more frequently written in school than creative stories. To bridge the gap a bit, I created this page of essay writing prompts that allow students to use both their imaginations and their sentence writing skills all in one enjoyable assignment.

5. Character Writing Prompts about Children - Kids enjoy writing about kids. As a result, here is my page of character writing prompts about children. These prompts allow kids (and adults) to think about new type of kid characters in fiction that are fully-developed and ready to place directly into a story.

4. Descriptive Writing Prompts - If your students are having trouble describing things as anything more than "red" and "big" this page of student writing prompts can help. Using the prompts may help your students to put a little more elaboration into their elementary education.

3. Kindergarten Writing Prompts - Just to make sure the younger folks don't get left out, here are some kindergarten writing prompts. Most kids this young are unable to write too much at this age, but the prompts can also be used as "conversation prompts" so that they can practice expressing words out loud before they can get them down on paper.

2. Home Town Writing Prompts - Many students have never left their home town. Others remember their birthplace fondly. Since a home town is so important to students, trying these writing prompts may bring up some emotional and descriptive stories. Perfect for creative writing time.

1. First Grade Writing Prompts - Month in and month out this is the most popular student writing prompts page on my site. I must have done something correctly! These prompts can be used on any age, but they are a little simpler than most, which makes them perfect for first graders.